Traditionally, outdoor courtesy benches have been constructed of a number of components usually manufactured primarily from wood and concrete. The use of these widely dissimilar materials has made it difficult to initially join such components in a dependably sturdy assembly and have been inconvenient and quite expensive to maintain in a manner assuring the preservation of their desirably attractive appearance for any appreciable length of time. Such prior art benches usually include a pair of spaced endwardly disposed support legs formed of heavy precast concrete individually having opposite front and rear ground engaging foot portions and rearwardly disposed upwardly extended back support portions. A plurality of wooden seat boards or slats are mounted in closely spaced bridging relation on the legs by a plurality of expansion anchors in the legs adapted to receive a number of lag bolts or the like extended through the seat boards. Frequently, a decorative face board is disposed on the front of the legs below the seat boards and secured in a similar manner to afford additional strength and support for the forward most overhanging seat board. A large heavy advertising panel or backboard of solid wood is similarly directly secured to the front surfaces of the back support portion of the legs to serve as a back rest for persons sitting on the bench. Because of the substantial overall weight of such benches, they are extremely difficult to handle during assembly and to transport to the bench site and are equally difficult to manuever even when only slight adjustments are necessary during the final positioning operation at the site. Another problem has developed in that such benches are highly subject to damage from vandalism. It has been found that if a sufficiently strong rearwardly directed force is applied to the top of the back rest, the bench can be tipped over with damaging consequences. While the benches are normally relatively stable in ordinary use, the susceptibility to tipping is greatly enhanced by the substantial concentration of weight in the upper back support portions of the heavy concrete legs.
Other problems experienced with the prior art benches include the need for periodic maintenance, including frequent painting to maintain an attractive appearance and to prevent rotting of the wooden seat boards, the patching of cracks and chips in the concrete legs and other adverse effects from normal wear and tear, notwithstanding the occurrence of any normally anticipated less destructive types of vandalism than described above. Furthermore, the bench site must also be maintained which requires the cutting of weeds, grass, and the removal of trash, snow and other unsightly extraneous matter from around and particularly under the bench. Another disadvantage with this type of prior art bench is the inability to utilize the backside of the advertising panel because of the large concrete back support portions of the legs which substantially obscure a relatively large area of the surface.
Some of the above described problems have been partially overcome by a second generation outdoor courtesy bench presently in use which is substantially of the same configuration as that described above but which utilizes a lighter weight fiberglass material for the several bench components. The legs of such second generation bench are formed of a hollow one piece construction and have an integral back support portion which are open at the front for filling the interior of the legs with a loose granular weighting material such as sand. A substantially flat impervious seat portion of the same fiberglass material is mounted on top of the legs which has a tendency to collect and retain rain water thereon. This is not only uncomfortable for persons wanting to sit on the bench but after puddling and drying leaves unsightly rings or stains which are very difficult to remove. An expensive aluminum frame which frequently presents a number of hazardous sharp edges is mounted on a heavy solid wood backing panel which is secured to the back support portions of the legs. The panel and frame assembly is adapted to hold a lightweight polystyrene advertising panel which can be changed by removing at least a top segment of the aluminum frame from the wooden backing panel. Again, the backside of the backing panel of the bench is useless for carrying an advertising message thereon because the large back support members of the legs obscure a substantial portion of the back surface of the bench. Furthermore, before transporting the bench to another site, the loose sand, weighing hundreds of pounds, must be dumped out of the legs and somehow retrieved and placed in smaller containers that can be easily lifted and transported to the next bench site. Dumping of the sand is difficult to accomplish without scattering a substantial portion thereof around the former bench site, making clean up difficult and usually resulting in substantial contamination of the sand, rendering it unfit for further use. The second generation bench also has the same problem of being susceptible to the accumulation of debris, snow and the like beneath the bench. It is therefore recognized that an improved outdoor courtesy bench is desirable which is more lightweight, easily assembled, conveniently transportable and substantially more stable than heretofore provided by the prior art benches. Accordingly, the present invention is directed to overcoming all of the problems as set forth above.